


Legacy

by mardia



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Finn Skywalker, Finn is a Skywalker, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6679765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardia/pseuds/mardia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long time ago, Luke Skywalker had a son. For seven wonderful months, he was a father to a small, wonderful baby boy with tiny brown fingers and his mother’s nose and dark eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacy

The first time that Luke sets his eyes on the former stormtrooper now called Finn, he can’t breathe.

Rey’s already taken off on a run, sprinting down the tarmac towards the boy in the tan leather jacket, not hesitating before she throws herself into his arms, joy radiating off them both, a joy so tangible that Luke almost believes he could touch it with his hand, take some of it for his own.

It’s a wonderful sight, the two of them together like that, bright and innocent and carefree.

But that’s not why Luke stares.

*

A long time ago, Luke Skywalker had a son. For seven wonderful months, he was a father to a small, wonderful baby boy with tiny brown fingers and his mother’s nose and dark eyes.

“He’s taking my name, you know,” Mara had warned him, half-laughing but meaning it all the same. “He’s a Jade through and through.”

“I don’t mind,” Luke had told her, absently, far more preoccupied with how little Akoni’s hand was holding his finger in a surprisingly strong grip. “He can be a Jade.” A thought occurred to him then, and Luke lifted up his head and offered, “We could both be Jades, if you wanted.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d proposed to her, but it was a time when he saw her consider it without tossing out a quip to deflect it away. “The galaxy will always know you as Luke Skywalker, though,” Mara warned, testing, and Luke had just shrugged.

“Let them. We’ll know the truth.”

“Luke Jade,” Mara said slowly, testing it aloud. A grin spread across her face, her teeth flashing white, and she laughed. “It does have a ring to it.” Akoni chose this moment to burble, waving his tiny hand in a tight fist, and Luke laughed.

“Think he agrees with you,” he’d said, gently rocking their son in his arms, and Mara had curled up against his side to join him in watching their son--their son that they’d created together--with awe.

“Well, of course he does,” she’d said. “Us Jades always know a good deal when we hear one.”

*

“What do you know about Finn?” Luke asks his sister, much later that day. 

He’s not looking at Leia when he asks this, but he can see her in his mind’s eye--her narrowed gaze, the way she lowers her cup of tea before she responds. “Now what do you mean by that?”

Luke is staring at one of the maps on the screen, but blindly--it’s not what he’s looking at. in his mind, all he can think of is that boy on the tarmac, that blinding smile he’d given Rey upon her return, how for a moment there in the sunlight, he’d seemed to almost _glow_. “It’s clear you trust him. Rely on him. Why? What made you do that, given where he came from?”

“Luke, it’s not like you to talk like this,” Leia says slowly. “What’s going on--why would you think we shouldn’t trust Finn?”

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t,” Luke says, his voice faint to his own ears. “I just want to know why _you_ do.”

“You mean aside from how he helped us destroy Starkiller Base and saved the lives of everyone at D’Qar, including my own? Or how he rescued my top pilot right from under the noses of the First Order? Or how every piece of intel he’s given us has proven to be accurate--” Leia’s outrage is almost radiating off her, coming through in pulsing waves, and Luke closes his eyes against it--not because he fears it, but because in it he reads the possibility of something he wants so badly to be true.

“But you trusted him before all of that, Leia,” he interjects, keeping his voice mild. But when he glances over at her, his face gives him away, as he knows it would. “Didn’t you?”

Leia’s watching him with a faint frown, her eyebrows coming together. “Luke, what are you really asking me here?”

“You trusted him from the beginning, Leia,” Luke says to her, and he can hear the desperation in his voice now, rising despite himself. “Just tell me why. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, don’t give me the explanations you’ve given to others. Just tell me why.”

Leia gives him a long look, but finally sighs and does as he asks, her gaze turning inward as she goes back to that day, that moment when she’d met a former stormtrooper and trusted him straight away. “Poe Dameron had been raving about him for days before I met him, insisting he owed everything to this anonymous stormtrooper--so when Finn showed up, I was prepared to at least hear him out, offer him a role with us, or safe passage to wherever he wanted to go in the galaxy...but then I met him, and the second I did, I thought…”

“What did you think?” Luke prompts. Leia’s mind has traveled back then, to that moment, walking towards Finn, and he can almost feel her emotion right there, her gratitude, her pleasure and surprise--

“That he was good,” Leia says in a whisper. “That he was...important, somehow. I can’t explain why, I just knew.” Her gaze focuses back on Luke and she adds, in a stronger tone now, “And I was right, too, so why all the questions, Luke?”

After a moment, Luke comes to the table and takes the seat next to her. He doesn’t speak at first, gathering his thoughts in his mind, his courage in his hands. “You’re right. He is important. Leia, I think…” But his voice falters at the last, and Luke just looks at his sister mutely, his heart in his eyes as he wills her to understand what he still doesn’t dare to hope for aloud.

And because she is his sister, because she is his twin, Leia looks at him and understands, at last. “Oh, Luke,” she breathes, her eyes filling with tears. “Akoni?”

His throat tight, Luke still manages to nod. 

He’s not sure which one of them reaches out first, but suddenly his hands are in Leia’s, and she’s gripping his non-metal hand in a bruisingly tight grip. (She’s probably doing the same with his metal hand as well, but Luke’s not able to gauge that as easily.) “How is this possible?” she asks, disbelieving, and Luke shakes his head. 

“I don’t know, I thought--Leia, I thought he was dead, we all thought he was dead--”

Leia inhales sharply. “Mara--have you told her?”

“I’ve sent word through channels,” Luke says, somehow keeping his voice steady. “She’s...not the easiest to find these days, by her own choice.” Leia’s eyebrows twitch upwards, and Luke feels his mouth twist, conceding, “Yes, I know the irony.”

And, though he won’t say it aloud, it’s plain fact that of all the people in the galaxy Mara wishes to avoid, Luke is at the top of her list.

“We thought he was dead,” Luke says again, looking away from Leia, remembering the agony of that time--leaving his son behind on a remote Outer Rim world for the first time in his short life, entrusting him to Mara’s relatives while he and Mara went off on a diplomatic mission that couldn’t wait--and while they were gone, the organization that would become the First Order attacked that star system, and in one short, brutal massacre, the village was destroyed, Mara’s relatives were dead, and his son was gone.

Mara had turned to vengeance in her grief and pain. Luke had turned to despair, and then to the Academy--until that dream, too, had ended in ashes and death and devastation.

And rage. A rage so deep he’d hidden himself away to escape from it--or to protect the galaxy from it.

Until Rey had arrived, with her hopeful eyes and his old lightsaber in her hand, calling him back to a fight Luke had thought he’d left behind. Calling him back to his twin, and to the son he’d believed lost.

“We’ll need to be sure,” Leia’s saying now, her voice dragging Luke back to the present, and when he frowns at this, she looks back and says, “Luke, I know, but--he’ll need proof, I think.”

Luke swallows. “That--that makes sense.” He pauses, and the words burst out of him without permission. “What is he like?”

It feels ridiculous to ask that sort of question about your own child, but Leia’s face lights up immediately. “Luke, he’s wonderful. Smart, a quick study. Full of bravado, of course, but...he’s kind too. Impossibly kind.” Her smile gentles, and she finishes with, “He’s everything you could ask for and more.”

Luke swallows, his throat too tight to speak at first. “And he’s my son,” he says at last, his voice hoarse. 

Leia’s face blurs momentarily in front of him, and she reaches out to caress his now wet cheek. “Yes,” she agrees. “He is.”

*

Luke holds his peace for another day. He ignores Rey’s searching looks during her training session, holding his tongue to keep from asking her leading questions about Akoni--or Finn, as he's called now. 

He bides his time until word comes from Leia that the tests have confirmed what he already knows to be true, and that they can go ahead at last. 

*

Luke’s the first to arrive in the briefing room, and when Leia comes in soon after him, she clearly has to stifle her grin at seeing him impatiently waiting in his chair a full twenty minutes before anyone else is supposed to arrive. 

“Are you allowed to drum your fingers on the table like that when you’re a Jedi?” Leia teases, taking the seat closest to Luke. 

Luke ignores this, instead wondering aloud, “Do you really think this is the way to go? Having a crowd of people feels--”

“It’ll just be you, me, and Dr. Kalonia to confirm the test,” Leia soothes him. “Forgive me for saying it, Luke, but...he doesn’t know you. To have some legend show up and claim him as his son--it’ll be better if he hears it with people he knows, people who can help him make sense of it.”

For the next eighteen minutes, Luke drums his fingers on the table, and Leia doesn’t say a word. 

But finally, after Dr. Kalonia’s appeared, Luke’s son walks into the room, glancing around nervously as he enters, Rey and Poe Dameron right on his heels. His son is looking around the room with wary eyes, his shoulders braced as though he’s expecting a fight--or getting ready to run, if need be.

It makes Luke’s chest ache, watching him. 

“Hope you don’t mind us tagging along for this,” Dameron says, clapping a hand on Finn’s back. Even as he’s speaking, though, his gaze is sharp as he looks around. Rey, meanwhile, is standing right next to Finn, their arms just brushing each other’s. She’s watching the room with eyes that are nearly as wary as Finn’s, and if Luke could manage to think of anything else right now, he’d try and offer her a reassuring smile. 

Leia, however, has this in hand, as she smiles at all of them and tells Dameron, “That’s not a problem at all, Poe. Please, sit down.”

Poe gives them all a long look, before nodding briefly to Finn, selecting the chair that ensures that Finn will be sitting between him and Rey for this meeting.

Finn is the last to sit down. He folds his hands in front of him, his gaze landing on Luke for a moment before skittering away. “So what’s going on?” he asks, his voice low and unsure. 

The original plan called for Leia to explain matters, at least initially, but Luke is the first to respond. “We have something to tell you,” he begins. But as Finn looks at him, his mother’s dark eyes in his face, Luke corrects himself, and his voice cracks as he says, “I have something to tell you.”

At the edge of his vision, Luke sees Rey reaching out for Finn’s hand, Poe’s arm curling protectively around the back of Finn’s chair. 

“Once,” Luke says to the silent, waiting room, “I had a son.”

He doesn’t look away from his son as he tells the short, painful story, seven months of happiness followed by decades of grief and regret, and that moment when Luke stepped off the Millennium Falcon and saw his son in a stranger’s face. 

The whole time that Luke speaks, Finn’s eyes grow wider and wider from shock, his shoulders going rigid, practically vibrating from tension. 

The whole time that Luke speaks, his son is staring at him like this cannot possibly be true. 

At last, Luke falls silent, his hands curling into fists to keep from reaching out across the table. No one speaks--Finn looks to be a second away from hyperventilating, Luke isn’t sure that he even _can_ speak, and then Dameron breaks the spell, asking Dr. Kalonia in an urgent whisper, “Have you run any tests? No offense, but to take all this on faith is--”

“We’ve run tests, Poe,” Leia assures him in her calm voice; it’s incredible that she’s so calm when Luke’s heart is pounding so loudly in his ears. “I promise you, it’s the truth. Finn’s a Skywalker.”

Finn jerks a little at that, staring blindly down at the tablet Dr. Kalonia has passed down the table to him. Luke’s been too worried--too afraid--to attempt to sense his emotions through the Force before now, but at last he’s unable to resist, and he presses just a little--

\--and Luke is immediately knocked back into his chair, overwhelmed by the wave of panic, a panic so total that it overcomes anything else. 

Luke is perhaps the only person in the room who’s not surprised when Finn pushes his chair back without a word, getting to his feet and leaving the room without looking back. Poe calls out after him, and Rey sends a stricken glance at them all before she follows Finn out of the room. 

Luke’s brought back to himself when Leia takes his hand, her worry and concern radiating off her. “Luke,” she says gently. “Luke, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Luke replies, and even though disappointment is thick on his tongue, he means it. “Don’t be sorry. He’s alive. Nothing else compares to that.”

*

After Akoni’s death, after Mara left to pursue her own path--whatever Luke had left, he poured into the Academy. He tried not to, but in every child, teenager or adult that came to him looking for a better understanding of the Force--in all their faces, Luke saw an echo of his own son. 

He understood Mara’s desire for vengeance against the First Order, knew the wound at the heart of her could never be healed--but Luke understood himself as well, and he knew that if he let loose his own rage and grief upon the universe, he would set a fire that could never be contained, that would turn everything it saw to ash. 

That wasn’t the legacy Luke wanted for his son. So he worked, and worked, and for a time it was almost enough to keep the worst of the nightmares at bay.

But eventually the nightmare came to Luke’s door, in the form of his nephew’s shadowed eyes, and despite all of Luke’s fine intentions, the fire came, and it turned everything he’d loved to ash. 

*

Eventually, Luke goes off in search of his son.

He tracks him down in a meadow a few klicks away from the base, pacing in circles around a small fire while R2-D2 and Rey watch him. Rey is the first to turn to Luke, and her expression tells Luke that she, at least, is unsurprised to see him here. R2-D2 greets him with a loud hello, and Finn whirls around, his eyes wide as he sees Luke approach.

“Your progeny is very stubborn,” R2-D2 tells him, and if it’s possible to convey a sniff in Binary, the droid manages it.

“R2, it’s okay,” Luke says. He gives a brief smile to Rey and asks, gently, “Could you give us a moment?” He turns back to Finn and adds, “If that’s okay with you, I mean.”

It takes a long moment, but Finn eventually nods in agreement. Rey hesitates before getting up from her seat, going over to wordlessly squeeze Finn’s hand before leaving the meadow. R2 follows her, although not without loudly proclaiming that this had better be settled soon.

And eventually, as they retreat, Luke is left to be alone with his son for the first time in over twenty years.

“Did you tell your droid to follow me out here?” Finn asks after a long stretch of silence. “Was he supposed to guard me or something?”

“No,” Luke says. “R2 has always had a mind of its own, it--” He sighs, and says, “It was just trying to look out for you.”

Finn is silent at this, and as the silence stretches out, Luke finally says, half-hopeful, half-desperate, "I--you must have questions for me."

Finn looks at him, then he admits, bluntly, "I haven't really gotten to that point. I'm still trying to understand how this could all be true."

"It is," Luke says, keeping his voice gentle, making sure that his arms stay at his sides. "I know it's a lot to take in, but--you are my son."

There's a flash of apprehension at that, and Finn looks away, admitting, "I don't--I don't know what to do with that."

It hurts to say, but Luke tells him, honestly, "You don't have to do anything with that, if you don't want to."

Now Finn's looking at him, and if it wasn't such a critical moment, Luke could almost laugh at the flat disbelief in his expression. Mara would always look at him the same way if he'd done something she'd deemed to be particularly ridiculous. "You're _Luke Skywalker_. You're a legend in the Resistance, you're Rey's teacher, and you’re the General's brother. Of course I have to figure what to do with this."

He makes it sound like a duty--which to him it probably is. Luke turns over his possible responses to that, and resists the urge to delve into Finn's mind, even to skim across his emotions. Not only would that be unethical, it's also frankly unnecessary--Finn's face is an open book.

It's not Finn’s fault that his answers aren't what Luke selfishly wants to hear.

Finally, being careful to keep his voice mild and free of accusation, Luke asks, “Can I ask what troubles you about this?”

“It doesn't,” Finn starts defensively, and Luke's eyebrows go up. Finn exhales, staring down at the ground before he says, “This whole time, I've always thought I had a choice. Ever since I left the First Order, I believed that every decision I made was mine alone. Good or bad, it was still my choice.” He's looking at Luke, eyes wide and sincere, pleading for understanding.

Luke nods, and Finn continues, swallowing hard as he says, “And now you show up, and you tell me I'm your son, I'm a Skywalker. I'm part of this grand legacy now, and every step I've taken wasn't really my choice to make. I was always destined to end up here, no matter what. I've never had a choice in this at all.”

His chest aching, Luke says, “That's what bothers you?”

Finn hesitates. “That's...part of it.”

Luke exhales, taking that in. He looks at his son, and does what he should've done earlier, and _sees_ him. Not the child that he'd once cradled in his arms, not the shining beacon of hope on that tarmac--but the man in front of him now, who fought free of the First Order, who built a new life for himself, who is watching him doubtfully now, waiting for Luke to speak.

There's a fallen log nearby; Luke sits on it, looks at his son and tells him the only thing he can. “You have a choice, Finn. You have always had that choice, no matter what your name is, no matter whose genes you carry. There's always a choice.” 

Finn looks at him carefully, then gives a slow nod. 

It's easier to say this next part, and Luke even manages to smile a little as he adds, “And your last name wasn't Skywalker, actually. Your name was Akoni Jade.”

Finn cocks his head at this, curious--and then his eyebrows come together in confusion. “Wait. You said my mother's name was--is--Mara?”

“Yes. Mara Jade.”

Finn gapes at him. “Mara Jade, the _criminal?_ ”

Luke doesn't know whether to laugh or wince. It makes sense--a kind of awful, ridiculous sense--that Mara’s reputation would have trickled down to the stormtroopers in the First Order, have gotten warped in the retelling. “She prefers to be called a pirate, actually.”

Finn’s skepticism at this is nearly palpable, eyebrows climbing up to his hairline--and Luke says, mildly, “Your parents are pretty scandalous, I’m afraid. Sorry about that.”

Finn stares at him for another second, and then he snorts, his mouth curving upward in a brief smile. Luke smiles back--how could he do anything else but smile back?--and for that moment, the unspoken tension in the air eases. 

Eventually, Finn takes a seat across from Luke on the ground, folding up his legs beneath him. “So,” he says slowly. “I’m not a Skywalker.”

Luke shrugs. “You’re whatever you want to be.”

“And my mother is a pirate,” Finn continues, a little doubtfully. 

Luke can’t help but smile at that. “Yeah, she is.” He thinks for a second about telling Finn more, how they met, how _happy_ Mara is going to be to see him when she arrives--but he refrains. There will be time for that later. 

His son’s alive, and there will be time. 

Finn says, as though it’s a test, “I still want to keep the name Finn.” 

“You can do that,” Luke promises him. 

“Okay,” Finn says, and he doesn’t smile at Luke, not exactly, but his shoulders relax, and he’s not walking away. And he’s alive. That’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> FYI, I always fancast Mara Jade as Viola Davis, because even though it's a cliche, I love the idea of Viola Davis as a Force-sensitive space pirate. 
> 
> Also I'm over on tumblr as [themardia](http://themardia.tumblr.com), feel free to drop by and say hello!


End file.
